Chinese gays stepping quietly toward progress, rights

BEIJING — The first time director and movie buff Cui Zi’en tried to hold a gay and lesbian film festival in 2001, it was shut down by police before it even opened. When he tried to organize a gay cultural festival in 2005, five dozen police officers swarmed the venue, closing it.

But this Wednesday, Cui and other organizers managed to pull off the opening to the five-day Beijing Queer Film Festival with no police and no disruptions — drawing only an appreciative and low-key crowd to the Songzhuang Art District on the city’s outskirts.

For China’s gay community, this week’s film festival and an art exhibition on sexual diversity in Beijing, along with last week’s first gay pride festival in Shanghai, are quiet steps forward after years of slow but unmistakable progress.

Cui, a professor at the Beijing Film Academy, said the events mark a significant moment for China’s fledgling gay movement.

“The biggest change is that I’m not the only one doing this,” he said. “There’s more support from the gay community. Society has become more relaxed and open-minded in its thinking.”

But he sounded a note of caution that progress is often accompanied by setbacks, saying organizers would not consider the events a success unless they make it to their closing ceremony Sunday unscathed.

“In China, we were the first to put on queer events. In those events, we’ve had interference and that had lasting influences,” Cui said.

“(Now) we’ve had a successful opening and if we can also achieve a successful closing to the event, it will have another kind of impact,” he said.

China has indeed eased its control over some aspects of gay life. In 1997, sodomy was removed from the country’s list of crimes, although homosexuality was not taken off the list of mental disorders until 2001.

In recent years, the gay community in China has gone from being virtually invisible to establishing a small foothold in society. In large cities, gay bars have opened and gay and lesbian activist and support groups have sprouted. Internet access to gay groups online has helped ease the isolation for those who live in rural areas.

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